Chapter 4: Treats and techniques
Author Note: For Reasons Unknown is played by The Killers.
A whole week has gone by since I've suddenly found myself living as the famous Naruto Uzumaki. I've been training every day since my arrival with a focus on chakra control so that I could eventually attempt to use the three academy level jutsu at the finals. My progress was going surprisingly fast, and for that I was ecstatic. I thought that it would've taken a lot longer to even get as far as I have right now.
So far I've gotten the leaf sticking exercise, the leaf spinning exercise, and the multiple leaves sticking exercise to work for me. The control exercise that I'm currently working on is where I need to place a leaf in the middle of my hand and also on each fingertip. Then I focus my chakra so that it will swirl clockwise and spin each leaf without making them shoot off of my hand. It's been kind of a pain in the ass for me to attempt, but I'm not going to quit because of a little speed bump. I know that these exercises will be good practice for when I try to create a rasengan in the future.
Other than training I've been exploring the village and trying to regain as many memories as I possibly can. Knowledge is power in my world, and even more so in this world full of ninjas. With the right set of information a person can wield great power, and even come out on top in a hopeless situation. For this reason I find myself lightly jogging throughout the village on the lesser known paths in order to get a better sense of the layout. An added bonus is that it'll keep me in shape since I'll need to run a lot in the near future.
As I made my way back to my apartment I decided to head over to a different restaurant rather than Ichiraku. I spotted a dango restaurant soon after my search for some food and decided to grab a bite to eat in there. The shop looked quite busy with most of the tables occupied, but there was still room for me to sit at an almost empty table after I ordered. The only occupant happened to be a purple haired lady who looked to be enjoying her dumplings immensely. I excused my presence at her table to which she only waved me off with a "Yeah, yeah. It's fine kid." She continued to dig in to her large amount of food without paying me much attention.
I stared at nothing in particular as I awaited my order. It felt like a long time had passed in the time it took to gain my food because of the silence in the shop. In reality only a couple minutes went by before three sticks of hanami dango were placed in front of me. I tentatively picked up the stick that pierced the green, white, and pink treats and held it up to my nose. Then I briefly sniffed them before taking a small bite out of the dango on top. A sweet taste filled my mouth from the green colored treat. I quickly took another much larger bite and proceeded to finish the small snack. The next two pieces of dango were practically inhaled at the speed I was eating them which resulted in an amused laugh coming from the woman across from me.
I looked over at the now laughing woman to see that she put a huge dent in the meal that she bought. "Slow down kid. The food's not going to run away from you." I made an effort to slow down on the next three pieces, but probably not enough considering the muffled laughter of my neighbor. "I take it this is your first time here then?" I nodded instead of answering vocally so that I could continue eating. "Well I'll probably be seeing you around often if you're enjoying them this much." She stood up and began walking away at a leisurely pace. "See ya kiddo." I waved goodbye before focusing back on finishing my food.
A thought came into my head about how she was wasting the large amount of food that she still had left. I glanced where her plate was to see that it was completely empty save for a few small crumbs. "And she told me to eat slower." I smirked at that thought as I finished off the dango on my third stick. I took my plate over to a worker along with my neighbor's before leaving the restaurant. Another thought came to me about how the lady looked familiar, but I wasn't paying much attention to her features at the time. "Oh well. I'll probably see her soon since she implied that she eats there a lot."
I went back to mapping out the roads of Konoha for a short time before heading towards my apartment again. I canceled my transformation jutsu as I sat on my bed and decided on what else I should do today. The rest of the day consisted of practicing the multiple leaves spinning exercise, eating my supper, and skimming through a few chapters of a random history book out of my book pile. Then I took a shower, put on my pajamas, and passed out shortly after.
During the next week I tried to switch it up a bit. I thought that since I have a better understanding of chakra I could attempt to use a simple jutsu. An obvious choice would be to try an academy level one, so I chose to perform the kawarimi no jutsu. "The body replacement technique should be fairly simple to use compared to a D ranking jutsu or above." I grabbed my notebook that 'I' used in school and flipped it open. It didn't take too much time to find the information on it since the original Naruto only wrote down notes pertaining to jutsu.
Plenty of techniques were written down with no information to describe what they did. "His teachers might have talked about random techniques in passing. I'll try to look them up at a later time." Eventually I found the three techniques that I would need in order to pass the final exam. The writing was messy, but the wording looked to be from either a textbook or written during a lecture at the academy. "The kawarimi no jutsu is an E-rank ninjutsu that all academy students need to learn before graduating. When you pull it off you essentially replace your body with another object or person of your choice. You can place explosive tags onto the replaced object to surprise your opponent or use it to escape from your enemy if you're captured. The hand seals are tiger, then boar, ox, dog, and then snake. If you don't use the correct amount of chakra then you will have slightly different results. If you use too little chakra nothing will happen. If you use too much then you'll waste a lot of chakra, and you might emit a faint glow, but you'll still end up with nothing happening. Practice the technique to get a feel of how much chakra you'll need to use it."
Under the description of the body replacement technique another jutsu was hastily scrawled. Naruto underlined, capitalized all of the letters, and circled it many times. "SHUNSHIN NO JUTSU" My eyes widened as I read the name of the technique. "I didn't know that Naruto knew about this technique, let alone the name of it. Well at least he reminded me to specifically look this one up later. I always thought that it was a useful technique to learn." I sat the notebook back on my bed and got up to grab my tissue box.
I placed the tissue box about five feet away from me on the floor and practiced the hand seals. Once I thought that I got a feel for it I readied my stance and chakra. "Tiger, boar, ox, dog, snake." As I created the last hand sign I focused on switching with the box. I felt a burst of energy around me, but I was standing in the same place as before. "Damn it. This is just like the first time I tried using chakra." I looked down and saw a blue light glowing around my body. "Yep. It's exactly like before." I huffed in slight irritation, but continued on without pausing.
I worked solely on that technique for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon before getting it down. I switched with the tissue box before using the jutsu again to switch back. "Well I'm not that surprised to get it done this quickly. Naruto had a limited timeframe to get the shadow clone jutsu down perfectly before being caught. It was pretty impressive even if the only reason he was able to use that jutsu was because he had a huge amount of chakra at his disposal." After my second major accomplishment I immediately began to think up a sort of celebration for myself.
It didn't take too long to come up with a good idea. Ten minutes later found me walking down a street while quietly singing 'For Reasons Unknown' under my breath. I was in a good mood and I had to show it somehow. Soon I found myself walking into the dango shop that I've quickly grown to like. I ordered five sticks this time now that I know just how delicious the sweets are. After I ordered I looked for an empty table only to spot a familiar looking woman sitting at the same table as the last time I saw her.
I waved at her in greeting before sitting down across from her once more. "Hey, do you mind if I sit with you again?" She looked up at me and shrugged. "Sure kiddo. I don't mind." She finished chewing her food before setting her stick down on her plate and looking at me. "So what's your name kid? If we're gonna keep meeting like this I'm sure you don't want to be called boyo or some other shitty nickname."
"My name's Haru, but I don't care if you call me something else. As long as it's not insulting like dumbfuck or some other shit then I'm fine." She let out a loud laugh at that. "I think I like you kiddo. The name's Anko, and don't forget it." She bit off a large chunk of dango before continuing. "So what's up? I just got done with a job and came here for a snack."
"I'm on my break from school so I haven't been doing much but trying to catch up before it starts up again. I just finished successfully using the kawarimi no jutsu and came here to celebrate." I smiled at my small accomplishment before taking a bite of my white dumpling. She smirked at my admission before speaking again. "So you're an academy brat huh? That doesn't surprise me all that much."
I only raised my eyebrow and replied with, "And why is that?" She let out a small laugh and said, "Well it's kind of obvious. Most of the civilian brats go everywhere with their parents, and even if they don't, they act like the immature little hellions that they are. You behave like a mini adult and travel around alone from what I've seen so far." I tilted my head in thought before nodding in affirmation. "That sounds about right." Anko smirked again and stood up from our table.
"Well I'm heading out for now. I practically live here, so you know where to find me." She gave a one handed salute as she walked away from me. A puff of smoke surrounded her once she stepped outside, and I saw that she left after the smoke cleared. "I really need to learn that jutsu." I tucked back into my food and finished the first three sticks. Then I took both of our plates to the counter and bagged up the last two so I could save them for later.
